9 Things You Did As A Kid You’d Never Let Your Kids Do

Wait In The Car For Your Parents

Nowadays if you see a child in a locked car you appear to be within your rights to smash the window and drag them out to safety. When I was a kid it was totally normal for my parents to leave all three of us in the car, in the sun, in the carpark while they just ‘popped in’ to the shop to grab a few groceries.

Never mind that we were three children under 10, including a toddler, in the car alone. It was only half an hour after all.

Walk Your Neighbourhood In Packs

In the long summer days of my youth time was spent roaming around the neighbourhood in large packs. Not packs of dogs mind you, but packs of children, all the kids who lived within a few blocks of our local park would meet up and just wander about, aimlessly trying to entertain ourselves.

Sometimes we’ll all head off to different kids’ houses, sometimes we’d just do some good ol’ fashioned loitering. Well, it seems this is much less common now, with neighbourhoods surprisingly empty of roaming children.

Not Wear Shoes

While we did our loitering and our aimless roaming and wandering, particularly in the summer, we spent most of our time barefoot. Shoes were considered a kind of ‘formal wear’ to kids when I was young, something to be avoided unless absolutely specified by a parent.

Even thongs were often discarded for the feel of the boiling hot concrete under our soles as we walked on the footpaths. Sure, we got stubbed toes and blisters, but never reconsidered our choices.

Walk To The Shops Alone

It was not unusual when I was a kid, even as young as six or seven, to be sent to the local corner shop by my parents to grab something like milk or eggs for dinner.

In fact it was one of my favourite things to do because corner shops were expensive and a few 10c sweets could easily be snuck with the change and eaten on the way home. Now I would be more than surprised to see a little six year old struggling to carry three litres of milk home in a torn plastic bag, but back then it was just how things were done.

Next Page: More Things I Did As A Kid That I’ll Never Let My Kids Do